But this time, there was something else in her face. A pinch to the lips, hastily masked. Adam caught her hands, and looked down into her eyes for a moment. “You all right, neshama?”
Sigrun made a face. “Just fine.” She leaned past him to look into the dining area of their small apartment. “You’re going to need a house, you two.”
Lassair stood and came to the door of the kitchen, sliding her arms around Sigrun’s waist as Adam moved out of range for a moment. Sigrun pulled slightly away from Lassair; where the flame-spirit was very much a toucher, Sigrun was very much not. Adam couldn’t hear what the spirit said to Sigrun, but he could see the pinched look leave Sigrun’s face. Silent communion between the two, so unalike in so many ways, yet similar in others. God-born and spirit. Neither was quite mortal, and both were in love with mortal men. Lassair had innocence, counterpoised against a strong hedonistic streak, and Sigrun had world-weariness and distance, counterpoised against a shy sort of delight when someone let her in. As if she hadn’t realized that there were doors in all the walls she kept around herself.
Trennus moved to the kitchen now, as he followed up on Sigrun’s comment, moments before. “I know we need a house. I’d love to buy something up in Tarvodubron, near my parents’ villa, on the edges of the Caledonian Forest. But the north end of Britannia makes for a long trip to anywhere.”
“The house next door to ours in Judea is still up for sale,” Adam noted. “Not as long of a plane flight. And we’re not all going to be on Livorus’ detail forever. Sooner or later, we’ll all have to move on. . . but I think we’d kind of like to keep track of you two.” He slipped his arm around Sigrun’s waist. He knew he could speak for her in this. Tren had become his best friend over the years, and he knew she cared deeply for the Pictish man. Enough to tolerate Lassair calling her sister, anyway, and occasionally to return the term.
“Yes, but then we’d be living in Judea.” Trennus grimaced. “I’d prefer Novo Gaul. Except then I’m back to long plane flights.”
“Plenty of time to decide,” Adam said, thumping his fist against Tren’s shoulder. “Besides, I think Judea’s climate is changing. Every time we go there now, it rains. People comment on it.” He met Trennus’ eyes for a moment. He didn’t need to say it out loud. Trennus’ gaze tracked over to Sigrun and Lassair, who were still conversing silently. And he nodded, once.
But the only response the summoner returned out loud was, “It’s not the climate, Adam—not entirely, anyway. It’s your people’s truly irritating dislike of magic and spirits.” Tren grinned at him. “It would be hard to be who I am, and live in a place like that!”
___________________
Maius 8, 1960 AC
Dr. Minori Sasaki had been shuffled from apartment to apartment between the various lictors for the past three weeks, so that no one of them had had to look after her for a long stretch. Kanmi had detected resignation in her expression, and she’d muttered in range of his hearing, that she felt like a package. Pretty much what you are, at the moment, he’d thought, but had taken her to the firing range at the main Praetorian building in Rome, so that her skills could be evaluated.
Much to Kanmi’s surprise, she turned out to be an excellent shot with a derringer. Ben Maor, predictably, had set her to practicing with a very small, Judean-made pistol, manufactured by Hevim. It held six rounds of .25 ammunition—comparatively, tiny, but Dr. Sasaki might be able to slip the small weapon into an inner pocket and have it overlooked. Even more surprisingly, the doctor started attempting to enchant the bullets herself. It was fairly clear that she hadn’t done this outside of a classroom exercise before, however, but Kanmi merely watched as she carefully did her math and began layering enchantments onto each bullet. The only way to learn this skill was to practice it. He was, however, intrigued by the fact that she actually rigged each bullet to displace the air ahead of it. Essentially, a vacuum opened ahead of the bullet’s path, displacing air to either side. The trick should add to accuracy, and prevent bullet spin and muzzle velocity from being lost. He’d have saved this enhancement for a sniper rifle, himself, but it was an interesting concept. She also layered in an enchantment that would reduce the ambient temperature of any matter that the bullet impacted with by almost exactly a hundred degrees. The enchantment was set up to remove the energy from the air, tissue, solid matter, and use it to fuel the enchantment itself, recursively. Efficient, it only required the initial energy of the bullet firing, itself, to begin the spell process.
“If you’re trying to induce hypothermia as a merciful way of dealing with people shooting at you,” Kanmi told her, after listening to her incant, carefully, over each bullet, “I wouldn’t bother. If they’re shooting at you, they want you dead. Kill them back and kill them faster.”
“That’s not my intention. I’m setting the diameter at about a three-inch radius. Even if I only clip someone, the cold will kill tissue, almost instantly, and there will be a moment of shock to the body.” Sasaki shrugged.
“I don’t agree that it’s the most effective enhancement you could use, but it’s your life, doctor.” Kanmi forbore to mention that he might wind up relying on her to watch his back. Astarte. What a notion.
He sat against the wall and watched as the others tested her physical skills in the Praetorian gym. To her credit, Sasaki had taken one wide-eyed look around at the naked wrestlers around them, and gone completely stone-faced. Hadn’t looked, hadn’t reacted to the various cat-calls, any more than Sigrun did. And Lassair. . . Kanmi had never seen the spirit manifest in the gym before, and Trennus was, laughingly, trying to show her a few trips and chokes. . . but gently, setting her down each time on the mats with great care. The cat-calls Sigrun usually got, and that Minori had received, had faded into a kind of awed silence as the other Praetorians got a look at Trennus’ ‘wife.’ Followed by muttered blasphemies in a half-dozen languages. And all the spirit had done in response was look over, wave cheerfully, and ask, Oh, are we supposed to be naked here? I can disrobe. I wouldn’t wish to go against local customs. Nothing but blithe cheer in her voice, and she’d immediately started unlacing her bodice, only to have Trennus catch her wrists.
If one wasn’t used to Lassair, she tended to get a reaction. Kanmi had needed a cold shower two years ago, when she had, in a moment of glee, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him for the first time. Right in front of Trennus, too. He’d apologized to Trennus, and the Pict had shaken his head in bemused fashion. It’s all right. She loves all of us, and she doesn’t make a distinction between friendship and sensual love. It’s all the same to her. But she knows that I do, so that’s probably the reason you haven’t woken up with her in bed with you, Esh.
Baal’s teeth, tell her I said no in advance, because I don’t think I’d be able to say no if she did that. Kanmi had fought down the panic reaction. He definitely didn’t want to do that to Trennus. Matrugena was a colleague he trusted with his life, but a friend, too, and you just didn’t betray people like that. How in the name of all the gods do you deal with this so calmly?
Trennus had snorted. Because I know her. I understand her. She’s not human, but it’s . . . really not that hard to comprehend. She loves you, and wants to see you happy. Be glad she hasn’t tried to match-make for you. Yet. She says you’re still too angry to inflict you on any woman.
In the gym, Kanmi had snickered under his breath as the room had cleared rapidly as various male Praetorians headed, in varying states of embarrassment or amusement, to the showers. He then turned his attention back to the mat area where Sasaki and the others were, watching closely. Ben Maor had been practicing martial arts for about seventeen years, and he and Matrugena were both skilled at their respective arts, but Sasaki had obviously also trained, and for quite some time. The doctor was surprisingly fast, light on her feet, and whatever discipline she was using, she knew enough of its principles to use her lower center of gravity effectively. She knew how to get in on a larger opponent. . . but this was
all on the sparring mats. She freely admitted never having had to use it in a real-life situation. “What about him?” she asked ben Maor, looking over at Kanmi.
“I’m just an observer, most days,” Kanmi replied, shrugging. “If someone manages to get close enough to me to hit me, I’m doing something terribly wrong.”
Ben Maor had turned back towards him, and Kanmi held up a hand, seeing the Judean man already starting to draw breath to argue. “Yes, I know. Someone who’s fast on their feet can stop someone from drawing a concealed weapon. A gun can be fired before someone can get in to stop it. . . depending on how fast someone’s muscle memory lets them be. . . and either someone can shoot me or hit me before I can incant one word. I know.” He practiced with the others, if irregularly. Even Caetia was taller than he was, and he knew perfectly well that the valkyrie was probably stronger than either Matrugena or Ben Maor. Sparring practice wasn’t fun for Kanmi. The most utility he’d gotten out of it had been convincing the other three to let him practice incanting under combat situations. So that he could bring some of his defenses to mind now, even if someone had just hit him in the face, or had him pinned.
The younger man just grinned at him. “Come on. For once, we actually have even numbers, Kanmi. Get on the mats.”
Kanmi sighed, and obeyed. And was, promptly, shown just how fast Sasaki actually was, as she easily got in on him and hip-threw him to the ground. She looked startled, and began to apologize. “You weren’t ready—”
“Oh, no. I was as ready as I was going to get.” Kanmi was stronger than she was, but she was much faster, and actually knew what she was doing. He could, more or less, muscle his way out of a couple of the holds she put him in. . . so she wound up compressing his smallest, weakest fingers in a brutally painful lock she said came out of a system called chin na. “Now that,” Kanmi told her, as she walked him forward to the mats, holding nothing more than a couple of his fingers, which screamed in pain, “I want to learn.”
“You still need to be able to get in and behind someone to use it effectively,” Ben Maor warned.
“Yes, but most of what you and Matru want to teach me is useless for someone my size, fighting someone your sizes,” Kanmi pointed out, acerbically. “I need a stepladder to get to Matru’s shoulder, let alone his neck. Even you are an uphill battle for me, ben Maor. I can’t always pick my fights, but I have to work with what the gods saw fit to give me. Which wasn’t much.”
So he asked the doctor to show him some of the joint locks, and even ben Maor seemed to be learning something new here. Sasaki looked a little sheepish, even embarrassed, to be teaching, but pleased, too. Kanmi wound up being the demonstration dummy for most of this, as he was short enough for her to be able to effect the throws and movements more easily. So he put his head down on the mats and grimaced a little, periodically. It only seemed fair. He’d gotten his licks in on her research—in public, no less—so letting her grind bone on bone for a while seemed fair. “Are we even?” he asked at the end of the session, and got a puzzled look in return.
Before they left the gym, Caetia walked through spear-against-sword drills with the woman. Kanmi found he enjoyed watching them, but he doubted the utility of kendo sword forms in modern combat, and said as much. “No one’s going to let you wander around with a big damned sword.”
“No. . . but I have also trained with knives. The sword is more for. . . enjoyment. And in case I should ever need to defend my family’s honor in some fashion. Technically, I could also imbue its edge with heat, so that I could shear more easily through an enemy’s weapon or armor, and cauterize on the way through flesh.” Sasaki shrugged.
Caetia’s eyes had gone wide, and she’d tugged at the woman’s sleeve with a certain enthusiasm at that point. “Esh, you’ve been holding out on me for years,” the valkyrie accused.
“I thought the spear was largely ceremonial. I didn’t think you’d want me tampering with it,” he told her, in mild annoyance.
“No. I want every advantage in combat that I can get, as long as the event is not a formal duel. Even a temporary advantage might save lives.” Sigrun actually smiled at him. “Tamper at will.”
The time passed quickly. One week, Sasaki had been with him, one week with Matrugena and Lassair, and one week with ben Maor and Caetia. . . and then she was back on his doorstep, ready to go to Tawantinsuyu. The boys, for whatever reason, seemed to like her. They enjoyed her stories about growing up in Nippon, and her descriptions, once they cajoled them out of her, of growing up in a samurai court. As the daughter of a recognized concubine, Sasaki apparently had full legitimacy as a sort of ‘lower-ranked’ daughter. She would have gone to some form of a finishing school, and would have been married off, or bound as some lord’s concubine, if she hadn’t been what she was. “So you didn’t go to school? You had a pedagogue, like we do?” Bodi asked the night before they were to leave, in fascination.
“I had instructors. All of my brothers and sisters did, as well. We were taught to write poetry. We learned Qin and Latin. I was the despair of my mother because I did not paint well, and would rather ramble through the countryside than stay at my watercolors.” Sasaki shrugged. “One of my teachers thought I was a terrible day-dreamer. Always looking out the window, or reading the wrong book. I liked the ones on clockwork mechanisms, for example. Everything put together neatly. Everything works, and there are reasons why it works. My teacher caught me reading one of those books one day, instead of my assignment in poetry, and since it was the third time I’d disobeyed, he threw the book in the fire. I remember telling him that that would make my father angry. It was an old book, in Latin, and very valuable. And then I made the fire go out. I took all the air away from it, so it just died, all at once, and I reached into the coals and took the book out. I didn’t even think it was very important, at the time. I thought I was saving his job, and that he would be grateful. Once he finished being angry.” Sasaki raised her hands. “Everyone was agitated. They thought I could have burned the house down, or hurt myself. And they all wanted to know why I hadn’t told them I could do that.” A little shrug. “The problem was, I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I’d always been able to do little things, here and there. Getting a book I wanted down from a high shelf? Using a gust of air to move a ball more accurately in a game? I thought everyone could do that.” A faint sigh. “I was wrong.”
It couldn’t have been more different of Kanmi’s breakthrough moment with his own powers, which had been violent, painful, and the result of pain and fear . . . and probably his own subconscious realization that without his father to keep his brothers in line, he might not live. He found he rather envied her that peaceful passage, and his lips twisted. Even in matters like these, the noble-born seem to get it easy, he thought. It was irrational to blame her for her elevated birth, but he found that he did. At least a little. Bastet’s family had claimed descent from a one-eyed Nubian queen who’d held a Roman legion at bay with her archers, a thousand years ago. Her father was still highly-ranked among the country’s nobles. Kanmi grimaced the instant he realized he’d thought about his ex-wife, and put it out of his head. Made himself think about something else, and his mind jumped to Erida, instead. His joking words to his fellow lictors of five years ago. . . . having heard what she did to Abgar. . . and if she weren’t, you know, nobility. . . I think I’d throw over Bastet and ask her to marry me. My age, my type, and all that magical power. Eh. Best I can do is ask if she’d let me study her tomes. Kanmi grimaced, and looked at the ceiling, and did his best to focus solely on the present.
“So what happened then?” Bodi asked, scooting forward on the couch to get a little closer.
Another little shrug from Sasaki. “My father took me to court. Had me tested. I was instructed by the Court sennin for six years. For better or for worse, every talent I seem to have, seems best suited for direct combat. . . and we do not permit women in our armed forces. My interests and intelligence allow me do well in mathemat
ics and engineering.” Minori gave the two boys a sidelong glance, and clearly skipped over some of the issues. “My father allowed me to come to the west, get my various degrees, and to remain here. It’s better this way.”
“Bed,” Kanmi told the boys. “No, no arguments. We’ll say good-bye in the morning.” He took a little extra time getting them settled in, however.
Bodi, in particular, was upset that his father was leaving on a long trip, and for once, without them. He’d wanted to see Tawantinsuyu, especially the lines at Nazca, and Kanmi just shook his head when Himi, older and a little more astute, leaned over the edge of the higher bunk bed that was his own perch, and asked, “Father? Is it going to be dangerous there for you?”
“My job is always dangerous,” Kanmi told the boys, honestly. “But I try to make it less so. Get some sleep.”
Danger he could handle. It was more that he didn’t know which direction some of the danger could be coming from. Outsiders, the Source Initiative, fine. But there were other possible sources, and Kanmi didn’t like the paranoia in which he was currently living. He’d been amazed that Livorus had gotten Imperator Caesarion to agree to this whole mess. But the truth of the matter was, none of the rest of the Praetorian investigators had gotten anywhere with the matter in five years. And yet. . . . Kanmi suspected that Livorus and the Imperator had discussed the possibility that the Praetorian Guard itself might be compromised, somehow. Because it was a bad thought that had occurred to Kanmi himself. There were over three hundred thousand Praetorians. All trained bodyguards and investigators. Three hundred thousand people, all of whom were held to high standards in regards to ethics and trust. Someone should have found more information on this topic than Kanmi and his friends had, in their spare time. Someone may be getting paid to turn a blind eye to something. Which isn’t, actually, my responsibility. That’s all Internal Affairs.
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 93